


The BAU Solves Valentines

by DestinyFreeReally



Category: Criminal Minds (US TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-27
Updated: 2018-01-31
Packaged: 2019-03-10 07:16:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,231
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13497312
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DestinyFreeReally/pseuds/DestinyFreeReally
Summary: Between their regular caseload, Penelope gets the team involved in solving the mystery of a Valentine's gift from a secret admirer. (fluff on fluff here, folks)





	1. V-day at the BAU

    Donned head-to-toe in festive reds and pinks, Garcia charged from the elevator and headed through the bullpen, dropping Valentine’s Day presents on each of her valentines’ desks. Usually, in their line of work, red meant blood, and victims, and bad guys; but  _ nope. _ Pairing cards with chocolates around the office, Penelope smiled to herself. One day a year, red could mean love.    
  
    Once she finished her work as the Valentine’s Day fairy, Garcia marched her red heels to her office, ready to work, for real. The team would be in soon, and she wanted to be ready.    
  
    When she flicked the switch to her office, Penelope gasped,  _ someone _ had beat her into work, obviously- because pink rose petals were scattered around her desk, and a big, bright bouquet sat next to her main monitor.    
  
    Reaching for the card to see who was responsible for the sweetness, Garcia smiled at the sweet, flowery smell.    
  
    “Wow, cupid’s been in here, too?” JJ saw Garcia’s door open, and wanted to thank her for the candy she found on her desk. “You shouldn’t have done all this, Penelope,” holding up the big chocolate heart she was munching on, JJ smiled.    
  
    “Oh shush, you know I love you. And  _ you _ shouldn’t have done all  _ this,” _ Garcia kissed JJ’s cheek, leaving a barely-there pink smudge of lipstick.    
  
   “Garcia, this wasn’t me,” JJ shook her head, smiling. “What does the card say?”   
  
    “Oh,” Garcia blinked, going back to the card. “ _ Something beautiful and sweet for someone just like them.”  _ With a laugh, she fought a blush and a wide smile.    
  
    “Sounds a little more  _ romantic _ to me,” JJ gave Garcia a sly look, taking another bite of her chocolate.    
  
    “Typically, pink roses on Valentine’s Day symbolize a romantic hopeful, or can be an admission of romantic feelings,” Reid supplied, coming up behind JJ to thank Garcia for his gift. “I didn’t know that they made chess sets entirely of chocolate; thanks, Garcia,” Reid held up his prize to JJ, and leaned into Garcia’s kiss on the cheek. “There wasn’t a signature on the card?” He asked, eating a white chocolate pawn from his box.    
  
    “Nope.” Garcia shrugged, looking at the flowers, again.    
  
    “So  _ someone _ has a secret admirer,” JJ teased, and got Garcia blushing, again.    
  
    “It’s just one of you guys being sweet,” Garcia smiled, shaking her head and shrugging off JJ’s suggestion, and they were interrupted by a beep on her computer.    
  
    “Welp, the love-fest is over, at least for now; we have a case.” JJ frowned. “The rest of the team will probably meet us inside,” she said.    
  
    “What about your secret admirer mystery?” Reid asked, leading the way down to the conference room.    
  
    “Secret admirer?” Rossi piped up amused, from his chair at the round table.    
  
    “It’s probably nothing,” Garcia shook her head, fighting an eyeroll at her lovelies. “One of you guys left flowers on my desk anonymously, and as soon as we’re done with the terribleness that is this case, I’m gonna get to the bottom of who it was.” She looked around the room, making eye contact with all of them, looking for any clue. With a sigh, Garcia shrugged and reached for her presentation tablet in her purse, and missed the look between Rossi and Luke that would’ve been a clue all it’s own. 


	2. Smelling the Roses

  
    “Thanks, Garcia, we’ll see you when we land, okay?” Emily held her hand up, waving through the jet’s webcam at a smiling Penelope. The case finished, and the bad guy on his way to jail, everyone just wanted to get home.    
  
    “Okiedokie, boss lady. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to get to work solving my floral mystery.  _ Unless _ somebody on that jat wants to come clean?” Waiting a beat, Garcia held her breath. She didn’t have any take-it-to-court  _ proof _ that it was somebody from the team, but she had her gut, and her gut was telling her that  _ this _ case was very close to home. “Listen, I know it’s not some deep  _ love _ thing, it was just a nice gesture, and I just want the chance to properly  _ thank _ he or she for their niceness.” She added, and blinked patiently at her desk, waiting for a response.    
  
    “Maybe the mystery you should solve first, Penelope, is the flowers’ real message,” Rossi offered, his eyes smiling even through the webcam. “Like how motive often tells us a lot about our UnSubs,” he said.   
  
    “Super special supervisory agent David Stephen Rossi, are you telling me that these flowers mean you’re looking for wife numero cuatro and are still into genius blondes?” Penelope faux-flirted, trying to understand if Rossi was really giving her a clue. Because if he  _ was, _ that would mean Rossi  _ knew _ her flower gifter.    
  
    Off-camera, Luke smiled into his growing-cold coffee and shook his head at Rossi.    
  
    “Me? No, flowers are a young man’s game, Garcia,” Rossi winked. “Like marriage,” he laughed, and got the team laughing. “See you on the ground, kiddo,” he waved, and let Penelope nod and end the session.    
  
    As the plane took off, DC-bound, JJ shook her head, smiling.    
  
    “You  _ know _ Penelope Garcia, and she’s gonna figure it out,” she said, throwing her eyes to Luke. Emily laughed surprised, and looked at Luke, too.    
  
_ “You’re _ the one who…” Emily blinked, and the realization worked it’s way through the rest of the team, when Luke nodded into his coffee.   
  
    “I should’ve known that Garcia would make it a federal case,” Luke smiled wider. “I didn’t  _ think _ it would be such a tough case, but…” Chewing his bottom lip, Luke finally acknowledged that maybe Garcia wasn’t guessing it was him, because she didn’t want the flowers to be from him.    
  
    “But that doesn’t explain, Rossi, how did  _ you _ know?” Tara asked, and the group turned back to Rossi. Luke was curious about that, too.    
  
    “You know, I’ve been a profiler for a long time,” Rossi shrugged, bravado amped to eleven. “Body language, verbal cues…” He looked to Luke, and smiled, dropping the act. “Plus, I saw you coming out of Garcia’s office early Valentine’s Day morning,” he admitted, and earned a fresh round of laughs.    
  
   Nodding, Luke remembered that Rossi beat him to the roundtable that morning. “You got me,” he laughed.    
  
    “Well, so wait… what  _ do _ the flowers mean, then. Pink roses send a definite message…” Reid started, and caught a collective glare from the team.    
  
    “Let’s let Garcia figure that out, first,” patting Luke’s shoulder from behind, Matt laughed.    
  
  
  
    Back in her office, Penelope was  _ hot _ on the admirer’s trail. She just knew it. Very, very soon she was going to know  _ exactly _ who to welcome back with an extra-long hug. Stopping to smell the roses, she went back to work with a  _ ferocity. _


	3. Case Closed

    Nervously, Luke knocked on Garcia’s office door; they’d touched ground almost an hour ago, and he’d been making excuses, if only to himself, to stay at his desk and wait for Garcia. He hadn’t heard from her, and he wasn’t sure if she’d cracked the case, yet. Knocking again, with more force in his fist, Garcia answered the door with a squeak.  
  
    “Oh, it’s you! Come in, I guess use your profiler-y insights,” she smiled, and Luke brightened, wanting to be relieved.  
  
    But if Garcia _hadn’t_ figured it out, that meant Luke had to _tell_ her, and he wasn’t sure how to quite do that.  
  
   “How’s… The investigation going?” Luke entered cautiously, trying to measure his feelings.  
  
   “Okay, check this out. In addition to being _extremely_ beautiful and thoughtful, these _particular_ pink roses are kind of special, and not just to me.” She smiled up at him from her computer, with a glance over at the vase. The petals had to be cleaned up; they lasted about five days, the entirety of the case, before she had to throw away tough, cracked ex-petals. But the bouquet was still holding up, pink fading to yellow, but still clinging to life. They were still making her smile. “I found nine local shops that sold them this week, and _one_ of them has to have sold this one,” she showed her work proudly, as Luke rolled a chair up next to her desk.  
  
    “ _Nine,_ really?” The roses were special unintentionally, Luke had just liked the color. But _nine_ shops to dig through… Garcia was going to be up all night unless he just _said-_ then, Luke had an idea. “I’d bet it’s the one on the corner of Wexler and Greeley.” He nodded, when Garcia looked to him, unsure.  
  
     “And you know that from one little sniff of them?” She teased, and eyed his knowing grin. “Fine, fine, I’ll trust your profiler insights just this once, Newbie.” Garcia beamed back at her screen, bringing up the records for the shop’s transactions. “Okay, we’ve got two sales of bouquets like mine…” Her fingers clicked over the keys.  
  
    Luke watched Garcia’s tongue wet her top lip, as she hunted for information. Usually, on serious investigations the team was away for this part. Garcia would call with some incredible insight or deep-dug fact that would break the case- but the digging? He’d never witnessed so up close. It was exhilarating just watching her work, even as he felt the twinge of guilt that she was staying late all because he’d been too chicken to sign the card.  
  
   “How are you gonna tell which is actually yours?” He asked, and half-startled her from her investigation.  
  
   “Sweet, innocent little babe,” Garcia tsked, “watch and learn.” Checking the bouquets’ receipts for a timestamp, Garcia pulled footage of those times from the traffic camera across the street. Even though the camera was angled at the street, in the bottom corner of the screen, the door to the flower shop was visible, and so were it’s exiting patrons. “Let’s see, at 3:48 pm, on the Tuesday before Valentine’s Day, a bouquet like mine was purchased.” She queued the traffic camera footage to 3:48 pm, and waited to see a member of her team leave the store.  
  
    Luke exhaled a breath, and tried to remember what day he’d bought the flowers.  
  
   At 3:50 pm, a tall, white man left the shop, carrying a bouquet like Garcia’s.  
  
   “Okay, not our people,” Garcia shook her head, and queued the tape to when the second bouquet was sold. “5:14 pm, the Wednesday before Valentine’s.” Luke watched Garcia lick her top lip again, saying, “Now, let’s see my gifter.”  
  
    “ _Admirer,_ ” Luke corrected, and caught her glare, before she turned back to the screen.  
  
    His anxiety melted away seeing himself onscreen at 5:15, coming out of the flower shop, bouquet in hand, completely oblivious to the traffic cam.  
  
    Turning to him and blinking, Garcia couldn’t force her smile to shrink, and she felt it.  
  
    “Garcia, I didn’t mean to give you extra _work,_ I just…” Smoothing his palms down his jeans, Luke grinned, “You always go all-out for us, I just thought you’d like them, and even if you didn’t want them from _me,_ I wanted you to have them,” he confessed, and swallowed a gulp at the thought that he might’ve actually struck Penelope Garcia speechless, she still hadn’t really reacted.  
  
    “ _Luke,”_ her voice was a high almost-whine; from the start, Garcia had tried not to like him, and from the start she’d known she failed. “The bouquet, the petals… the _mystery…”_ Her smile persisted. “It wasn’t extra work, it was a fun, little side mission. And it was incredibly sweet of you, you know. You didn’t have to do this.” Eyeing the bouquet over Luke’s shoulder, Penelope sighed. “This is all about _chinking_ my _armor?”_ She asked, and got him laughing, even if it was the most bashful laugh she’d ever seen from him.  
  
    “Well…” Luke fought a shrug looking at the way even her eyes were smiling at him. On the plane, Reid had been asking what the flowers meant. “Really… it was all about taking you to a belated Valentine’s Day dinner, but I understand if you don’t want to-”  
  
    “Oh, I _want.”_ Garcia interrupted, softly, smoothing her red lips together. “I didn’t expect…” Looking around her, she trailed off, not even sure what she didn’t expect from him. Luke Alvez was every bit the sweet, sensitive, sexy man she’d always secretly known him to be, but consciously acknowledging such details, was probably going to take Garcia a minute. Or a dinner, or two. “But that doesn’t mean I don’t _want_ to… belated Valentine’s dinner, with you.”  
  
    Nodding, Luke laughed, “I should warn you, I don’t have a great track record of spectacular Valentine’s dates,” he admitted, just full of admissions for her tonight. The blush in her cheeks reminded him why he picked _those_ roses, special as they were. “Are you… hungry now?” He stood, a little nervously.  
  
   Standing, too, Garcia nodded eagerly. “Definitely.”  
  
  Getting ready to go, Garcia did one quick thing before shutting her monitors down; she saved the snapshot of a smiling Luke leaving the flower shop, her flowers in hand. It was a small, grainy image, but she wanted to keep it, dragging the snapshot to one of her favorite folders.  
  
    “Things to Smile at On Bad Days?” Luke read over her shoulder, smiling himself. The flowers had done their job, and leading Garcia out to the elevator, he figured they’d done a little more than their job, too.  
  
  


End file.
